Le Puy - Instant Durable - 1/250 [FERTIG]

After making the 'big three' - Notre-Dame, Chartres and Reims, I decided to make Le Puy. It is not a big cathedral, like those three, but, as a model, it is very interesting because:
a) the colours are very nice, even considering this stable's great standards;
b) the interior of the cathedral is part of the model and it gets visible because the façade is detachable. A bit like the Sainte Chapelle and on the same scale but on a bigger size!
I enclose a picture of the kit. 22 A4 sheets, with 250 parts.

Thanks John, I guess you'll like the interior as well
Construction starts with front end stairs and lateral walls.
The walls have some buttresses and openings to get inside. It is interesting because one goes up, another goes down and the third is straight and level. You'll be hard-pressed to find identical buttresses, too

The detachable front wall has not many pieces. The tricky work, of course, it to assemble them in a way that it gets as flat as possible. Fortunately, the fit proved to be very good.

Moving on to the interior lower floor. The fit, so far, is just perfect. This is good because, as you can see, the columns have irregular cross sections and there are many odd angles around...

Sorry for the late answer but a nasty virus (more than one, probably...) kept me 'off' for quite a while

@ Jens - I agree with you 100%. Somehow, this model doesn't look very appealing in a small picture of the front cover. Perhaps the fault is in the dark green base, and the cover is dark green as well. From that cover, you just can't imagine what is inside! Definitely a most underrated Instant Durable...

@ Jonh - you're right, John: very enjoyable indeed. What you say about the stairs leads me nicely to the upper floor. You see that there are 10 irregular octagonal columns to build, apart from 4 simpler ones. The method I used is an old one that works well - making card templates to put the columns to the right (?) shape. Copy the base shapes to transparent paper, punch the edges onto card, cut those parts and make a hole on them, to have access to the interior. It is all in the pictures below. Strangely enough, the printed base of the rectangular columns is shorter than the columns! I'll glue them latter, after checking their correct position.

There is a small problem with the interior arches: they are of varying sizes and the part number is not printed on the part itself. Be careful to copy that number to avoid an interesting puzzle...

After completing the interior, the next task is to hide it Easy to do but somewhat frustrating...
The cupola follows the usual construction method: remove the tabs and make new ones, glued inside the printed parts.

A couple of pictures of the model, as it is now. If you see a kink in the main roof top, you are correct. It is not meant to be a straight one!

I enclose some pictures of the main tower and parts for the next assembly.

Hello René, and thanks for your post
So far, it is all going pretty smoothly, which is not always the case with L'Instant Durable.
The only problem I had so far regards 2 of the internal arches. They were a bit too long. Easy to trim and the correction is not visible. I'm refraining from reinforcing some parts with card because it could make the model too rigid too soon...

Some more assemblies...

...and the parts for the last assemblies.

After a rather fruitful weekend, I enclose a number of pictures of the completed model. It is not an easy one to build but I do recommend it. Pretty architecture, almost no repetitions, great colours and no serious build problems!!

Some lateral views...

A double couple of details

And the last ones.

Thank you very much for your comments, René, John and AlanG
As I said earlier, this is a most underrated Instant Durable - much better than it looks on the booklet's cover!
You're right, John and I'm already planning for the next building. Most probably, Erkotyp's Pernstejn. In the meantime, I'll move on to a completely different subject - GPM's new pocket submarines...

Hello Jens,

Needless to say, I am following your report with a lot more than a passing interest
Slowly or not, you'll probably finish your model before I start mine...

Thanks, John I hope you enjoy the construction as much as I did